A THOUSAND MARIGOLDS

DADI WAS LAID out on the marble floor of her room in a crisp white sari, surrounded by a thousand marigolds, her head facing south. Five flames from clay diyas flickered light on a photograph of her healthy, vibrant younger self: a photograph garlanded with sandlewood shavings with a smudge of vermilion dust pressed into the centre of her forehead. A local Brahmin priest was reciting the required shlokas and the room filled with chants to expel evil spirits and expedite Dadi’s soul on its journey.

Under the photograph, on the floor, Dadi’s physical body (without its escapee soul) looked positively relieved – the strains of life that had lined her face were barely visible now. Savitri stared at the body she’d helped bathe in rosewater earlier. It was so clearly not her grandmother – she had walked freely away without looking back – and yet it was so familiar, this body, representing a lifetime of service.

Sitting around the body on the floor of Dadi’s bedroom were her many final visitors – family and friends who appeared from all corners of her life to pay their last respects. Among these were employees from Siddharth’s company; they’d known Dadi as the caretaker of hearts, who had come to supervise prayers and install the framed posters from the Bhagavad Gita around the workplace. Unexpected drinking companions of Siddharth’s from the Gymkhana Club arrived; they had known Dadi as the mother who took the whisky away from her son after only two glasses. There were friends from the local Farm Association, who knew Dadi as the revered elder who had insisted on building the health centre down the road for the villagers, and also helped commission one of the tarmac roads. A couple of childhood friends from her convent school arrived too. And there were a fair few of Guruji’s followers from number thirty-three, who had followed the decline of this noble soul through various encounters on the roads between the farmhouses where gossip was exchanged. There were relatives with relationships so distant that explaining the connection would have been too complicated. And later in the afternoon, just before the crematorium sent the ambulance to take the body, even Joyce from the Women’s Chamber of Commerce came, as did a few parents of failed suitors of Savitri’s, together with the parents of a possible new girl for Neel. (Although, naturally, this death in the family would do nothing to facilitate any such matchmaking.)

The most constant vigil, however, was conducted by the immediate family and their closest companions. Siddharth sat next to Dadi’s body and heard a chorus of blessings, reminiscences, regrets and thoughts – some of which didn’t seem to belong at a funeral – mixed together with Vedic shlokas and the odd Nokia ringtone. The office chaprasi was wondering how long he should stay to pay his respects; Hari, who sat next to Siddharth, was missing his own mother so badly he could almost see her in Dadi’s corpse; Savitri was assuring herself that her grandmother was still present, replaying the miracle of the night before; Arunji, who sat on the other side of Siddharth, was weeping tears of gratitude for the woman who had all but saved his life, remembering her from the days he had washed clothes for the big family; Neel was weeping tears of loss for everyone and everything, as if the earth had lost its sky, and its crust and mantle had crumbled; and Tota was staring at Dadi’s lifeless form, thinking about her own death and how it would feel to be in a white sari on the ground, not now, but well … sometime.

Nitin sat at the back of the room. He wanted to enclose Savitri in his arms to show her that his love would never die, but it didn’t seem appropriate to touch her in public, not here, not now, so he sat still with his back against the wall, observing the barefoot rites, inhaling the incense until he was giddy. The thing that most surprised him about these rites was the way that people answered their phones, as if their work was part of their religious life. His vibrated gently in his pocket. He wasn’t going to look, but he found himself unable to stop his hand reaching in so he could read the message. It was a few lines from Mae, telling him to pass on the news that her grandmother, Dolly Morrows, had died the day before. It felt strange to get the news of a death at a funeral – and stranger, too, to see how closely the two families seemed to be linked.

After a few hours on the floor, Dadi’s body was picked up and placed in an ambulance to go to the crematorium – to leave her house and family. The finality of this act created a sombre, heightened disquiet as the body was carried out by Siddharth, Neel and Nitin, heads covered; the shlokas that were sung to keep away the evil spirits had stopped, and in their place came the profound realisation that this was a final departure from the family home, and the only thing the living could do was be silent witnesses to the moment. Tota, who in the shrunken form of her mother-in-law saw herself being taken out of this same house, started weeping loudly. As she did she caught sight of a holy man looking at her, and recognised him from Savitri’s pictures as their guru – the two-hundred-year-oldman who had given Siddharth the special powers. I need to talk to him, she told herself, and invited him to sit next to her in the car. So while Savitri, Neel, Nitin and Buddhi Ayah accompanied the body in the shabby white ambulance, Siddharth, Tota, Guruji and Arunji followed behind in the Mercedes.

They drove past the fountain, through the gates, along the tarmac road that Dadi had commissioned and onto the MG Road towards the crematorium, in silence at first. Tota was rehearsing how she might ask Guruji to teach her how to meditate, when Siddharth seemed to intercede on her behalf.

‘Guruji, we must come and visit you soon because my wife would like to receive your blessings.’ He straightened his back. ‘She’d also like to learn to meditate.’

‘Yes, yes, she must come … and we have been waiting to see you again, too.’

And so it was that the death of Dadi brought about the biggest transformation in the family – a transformation that Dadi herself would never witness except through her psychic being, immersed as it was in the hope for the world she’d left behind.

‘Of course she must come. The Mother has gone, so it is necessary to find another who will do her work.’

‘I’ll ask Savitri to organise something,’ Siddharth said. ‘Mama would have been so happy to know that you would bring us together like this.’

‘She knew she was going to bring you together, but she could only do so by leaving you,’ Arunji replied. ‘She knew you would all rise to the occasion on her passing. This much confidence she had.’

A silence followed, filled with the noise of thoughts.

Mataji made miracles happen … so quietly … nobody even realised she was doing it, such was her Shakti …

That’s settled, then … we’ll fix a day to go to see this fellow sometime after the chautha … maybe before we go to the Ganga for the ashes …

She wanted nothing but the happiness of others … who will do her work now?

The Mercedes arrived at the crematorium and they were welcomed by an oversized Shiva, God of Destruction, standing with legs apart, his two feet planted defiantly on the gate, his trident pointing towards the heavens, a moon and a star hanging from his unruly dreadlocks. They parked the car and joined the chaos at the edge of the world, where the mourning population of a city bulging with life queued up to settle the sacred duties of death.

‘I’m sorry. You’ll have to wait your turn,’ said one of the orderlies. ‘Please be standing over on that side.’ He directed Dadi’s funeral party to one side of the funeral grounds. A three-legged stray dog roamed at their feet, sniffing old coconut husks. Siddharth found himself wondering why on earth they couldn’t modernise the procedure, make it a little less grim. What-all was this twenty-first century? He tried to pass a small bribe to the man who ran the facility, but he wouldn’t accept it – there was another body to be burned before Dadi’s, an order in this line to heaven that had been ordained, and why were they in a rush, anyway?

‘Dadi was so used to waiting. She waited and waited for this day!’ Savitri said.

‘And we will wait with her,’ Tota added. ‘It’s the least we can do.’